Mr Viral
Writing romantic love letters can feel like a prehistoric practice these days—where do you even get stamps? (Kidding. Kind of.) But for most of human history, if you wanted to express your feelings to someone not in your immediate vicinity, you had to write them down. Hand-written, eloquent prose professing a burning affection was the go-to romantic gesture, and history is filled with beautiful missives from all types of relationships, and even among best friends. And guess what? It’s not too late to try it yourself!
To warm your cold, Tinder-hardened heart, we’ve rounded up a list of excerpts from the most romantic love letters of all time, to give you inspiration and instruction. Let these examples prove that love and romantic letters are a perfect combination, both a free gift and the ultimate keepsake. Don’t wait until Valentine’s Day to make the gesture, either. The world needs more romance, always. So, get to writing!
Emphasize your sadness to be apart, like Napoleon to JoséphineFrench emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was known for his ruthlessness as a ruler, but in letters to his wife, Joséphine, the military leader reveals a vulnerability not found in his autocratic approach to expanding the French empire. Before you swoon: He divorced her when she could not have children. But Napoleon continued to write to Joséphine for years after their separation. In one, written while Napoleon was commanding the French army near Italy a few months after their marriage, he expressed how much he missed his wife.
“Since I left you, I have been constantly depressed. My happiness is to be near you. Incessantly I live over in my memory your caresses, your tears, your affectionate solicitude. The charms of the incomparable Joséphine kindle continually a burning and a glowing flame in my heart. When, free from all solicitude, all harassing care, shall I be able to pass all my time with you, having only to love you, and to think only of the happiness of so saying, and of proving it to you?”
Letter writing doesn’t have to be complicated. You’re probably writing a letter to someone because you are apart from them, so don’t forget to mention just how upset you are at being long distance. Whether you’re writing from New York to California, or just simple across town, the point is to say, “I want you here.”
Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.
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Praise their body, like Frida Kahlo to Diego RiveraFrida Kahlo and her husband, fellow artist Diego Rivera, had a tempestuous relationship, but in her romantic love letters to Rivera, you see only an intense love. In one letter from The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait, Kahlo wrote of her particular love of his physical form.
“Nothing compares to your hands, nothing like the green-gold of your eyes. My body is filled with you for days and days. You are the mirror of the night. The violent flash of lightning. The dampness of the earth. The hollow of your armpits is my shelter. My fingers touch your blood. All my joy is to feel life spring from your flower-fountain that mine keeps to fill all the paths of my nerves which are yours.”
Hands, eyes, armpits, fingers, even blood…in love letters for her partner, Kahlo proves that the more specific parts you can list, the better! Describe your favorite parts of your true love’s body in as much detail as you can (in a non-creepy way). It’s hot.
Admit your horniness, like Georgia O’Keeffe to Alfred StieglitzAnother artist who excelled at writing spicy love letters: famed painter Georgia O’Keeffe. Over the course of her 30-year romance with celebrated photographer Alfred Stieglitz, O’Keeffe exchanged more than 5,000 letters (that’s roughly 25,000 pages) on everything from her daily life to some of their more passionate encounters. After all, this is the woman who painted…”flowers.”
“Dearest — my body is simply crazy with wanting you — If you don’t come tomorrow — I don’t see how I can wait for you — I wonder if your body wants mine the way mine wants yours — the kisses — the hotness — the wetness — all melting together — the being held so tight that it hurts — the strangle and the struggle.”
I miss you + you’re hot = I want you. Start with “yearn,” “ache,” “long for,” and “can’t wait” and go from there. You’re already writing an effing romantic love letter, so just come out and say you’re all horned up!
Use poetic language, like Beethoven to his “Immortal Beloved”The identity of Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved,” to whom the iconic composer and pianist wrote a number of letters in 1812, is still largely a mystery. Many historians believe Beethoven’s “Beloved” to have been a diplomat’s daughter named Antonie Brentano, to whom the composer dedicated his “Diabelli Variations Op. 120.” In one of his letters found after his death—which was famously quoted in the first Sex and the City movie—he wrote:
“Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, Be calm-love me-today-yesterday-what tearful longings for you-you-you-my life-my all-farewell. Oh continue to love me-never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved. Ever thine. Ever mine. Ever ours.”
“Thee,” “thou,” and “thy” aren’t words we toss around too much these days, but if Taylor Swift can call an entire album evermore, you can make some flowery language to your loved one work too. Hot tip: “Twas” just means “it was,” and “fortnight” means two weeks.
Former President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush.
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Get to the point, like George H. W. Bush to Barbara BushLate U.S. President George H. W. Bush was surprisingly romantic in his letters to his wife, Barbara. In 1942, while stationed overseas, he wrote letters to both his parents and to his then-girlfriend, Barbara Pierce. To this day, only one love letter to Barbara remains, as Barbara reportedly lost the majority of her letters in a move after the pair were married. In the surviving letter, Bush joyfully explained how he envisioned the couple’s future.
“This should be a very easy letter to write—words should come easily and in short it should be simple for me to tell you how desperately happy I was to open the paper and see the announcement of our engagement, but somehow I can’t possibly say all in a letter I should like to. I love you, precious, with all my heart and to know that you love me means my life. How often I have thought about the immeasurable joy that will be ours some day. How lucky our children will be to have a mother like you…”
If you want them, say it. If you want to marry them, say it! Just think how sweet it would be one day to look back at those letters and see your intentions all spelled out for the first time. Romantic love letters are the one form where it’s crucial to have absolutely no subtext. Put it out there. Think about it: How nice would it be to hear them say, “You are the best part of my life?”
Lean into the drama of falling in love, like Oscar Wilde to Lord Alfred DouglasIn June of 1891, Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde met Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas, a then-21-year-old Oxford undergraduate who would come to be the author’s muse and lover. It was during the course of their affair that Wilde wrote Salomé and the four great plays which, to this day, are the cornerstone of his literary legacy. Unfortunately their relationship was not accepted at the time and the duo carried on their affair in secret. Wilde’s surviving letters make the enduring power of their love clear.
“Everyone is furious with me for going back to you, but they don’t understand us. I feel that it is only with you that I can do anything at all…Do remake my ruined life for me, and then our friendship and love will have a different meaning to the world. I wish that when we met at Rouen we had not parted at all. There are such wide abysses now of space and land between us. But we love each other.”
Your affair is probably not forbidden, but if it’s even a little bit taboo…ooh, that’s money. Job keeping you apart? Parents ever so slightly judgmental? You’re got yourself a tragic love story, the most romantic kind. And if there’s nothing standing between you, make it up! Yes, you can role play in letters. It’s fan autofiction.
Make wild promises, like Henry VIII to Anne BoleynThe King of England for 38 years, Henry VIII wrote his lover, Anne Boleyn, a collection of secret, romantic letters for her. Henry was a despotic ruler with six wives—two of whom he beheaded, including Anne. But he was also noted as a great romantic, as shown in the letters Henry wrote Anne during their years-long courtship.
“But if you please to do the office of a true loyal mistress and friend, and to give up yourself body and heart to me, who will be, and have been, your most loyal servant, (if your rigour does not forbid me) I promise you that not only the name shall be given you, but also that I will take you for my only mistress, casting off all others besides you out of my thoughts and affections, and serve you only…And if it does not please you to answer me in writing, appoint some place where I may have it by word of mouth, and I will go thither with all my heart. No more, for fear of tiring you.”
Ideally, wild promises you can actually afford…so maybe not expensive presents or trips to Paris if your budget doesn’t allow for it. Besides, it’s more romantic to tempt your beloved with a meaningful offering—like saying that when you are reunited you are excited to do XYZ sexual thing, go on a dream date you’ve always wanted to do, or just plain old worship them. Let your imagination run wild.
Virgina Woolf
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Vita Sackville-West
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Heap on the praise, like Vita Sackville-West to Virginia WoolfCelebrated writer Virginia Woolf and English poet Vita Sackville-West exchanged a series of love letters to each another that were, unsurprisingly, beautifully written. But it was perhaps a letter from Vita, sent from Milan on January 21, 1927, that offers the clearest, most unguarded, glimpse into their love story. Unlike Woolf’s flowery, ornate prose, West is far more straightforward.
“I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia…I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your undumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn’t even feel it. And yet I believe you’ll be sensible of a little gap. But you’d clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it should lose a little of its reality…I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any more by giving myself away like this — But oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defenses. And I don’t really resent it.”
The person you like is the prettiest, smartest, bestest person ever. No, “I really liked that nude you sent.” It’s gotta be, “That was the most gorgeous picture ever taken of the most gorgeous human being on Earth, and if you ever take another one it will make God weep with happiness.” Or whatever.
Embrace your sweet emotions, like John Cage to Merce CunninghamChoreographer Merce Cunningham and revolutionary composer John Cage met first as teacher and student, respectively, at the Cornish School in the 1930s. Though Cage went on to take a wife, the artist Xenia Cage, when the two men met again in Chicago, they couldn’t deny their mutual infatuation and remained together for nearly fifty years, until Cage’s death in 1992. Their correspondence is mostly about art, but one passage stands out as utterly romantic.
“I don’t know: this gravity elastic feeling to let go and fall together with you is one thing, but it is better to live exactly where you are with as many permanent emotions in you as you can muster. Talking to myself. Your spirit is with me. Did you send it or do I just have it?”
Maybe you’re not the type to express a “gravity elastic feeling” in a letter for a lover, but you can say you’re walking on a cloud or getting butterflies in your stomach. Think of a romantic love letter as sing-song-y. Lights are brighter! Colors more vivid! Evoke an emotion!
Poets Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky
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Make up phrases, like Allen Ginsberg to Peter OrlovskyFamed Beat poet Allen Ginsberg was openly gay and had a decades-long partnership with fellow poet Peter Orlovsky; the relationship was open, but they considered themselves married in spirit if not by law. Their tender early letters reveal how happy they made one another
“[I] miss you, as if a golden soul of me were still there, to think on, floating six feet above ground across the Atlantic (I feel your ball of soft fire in the room a near presence summoned up by a thot sometimes)…I’m making it all right here, but I miss you, your arms & nakedness & holding each other – life seems emptier without you, the soulwarmth isn’t around, only lots of energy…I feel alone without you Peter, I already daydream with tears of how sweet we’ll be, meeting again, in summer, it seems a short time off…Shine back honey & think of me.”
Soulwarmth? Shine back? Golden soul of me? Okay yes, he’s a poet, but you can make stuff up in your love notes too. Toss pretty words together and see how they shake out. If you’re really stumped, get some of those poetry fridge magnets and see what comes to you.
Get kinky, like James Joyce to Nora Barnacle (NSFW)Joyce had a very particular kind of affection for his devoted wife: He loved her farts. In some of his letters, Joyce is apologetic about his crass language (“God Almighty, what kind of language is this I am writing to my proud blue-eyed queen! Will she refuse to answer my coarse insulting questions? I know I am risking a good deal in writing this way, but if she loves me really she will feel that I am mad with lust and that I must be told all”), which he would never use in conversation, but he can’t help but express his desires for his “naughty shameless girl.” Read them with your partner for a laugh—or to get in the mood, if that’s what you’re into. No shame.
“You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora’s fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also.”
If you love farts, say you love farts. You can love farts. There’s nothing wrong with loving farts. More love letters should be about farts, I say!
Meditate on how your love surpasses even death, like Sullivan Ballou to his wife SarahLawyer and politician Sullivan Ballou was a Union officer in the Civil war and wrote a particularly eloquent letter to his wife Sarah a week before he he sustained a battle wound that would ultimately kill him. Sarah did not see the letter for many months and, just 24 at the time of her husband’s death, never remarried. The letter is famous for its expression of both romantic love for Sarah and also Ballou’s love of country and sense of righteousness in fighting for Lincoln, calling his motivation “pure love of my country.” Of all on this list, perhaps this is the most mournful.
“Sarah, my love for you is deathless. It seems to bind me with mighty cables, that nothing but Omnipotence can break…my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, nor that, when my last breath escapes me on the battle-field, it will whisper your name…O Sarah, if the dead can come back to this earth, and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you in the garish day, and the darkest night amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours always, always, and, if the soft breeze fans your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air cools your throbbing temples, it shall be my spirit passing by. Sarah, do not mourn me dear; think I am gone, and wait for me, for we shall meet again.”
A little emo perhaps, but shit happens. You could die at any time. Say you’ll haunt your S.O. as a romantic ghost, and if you do expire early, they’ll always have the letter…
Vladimir Nabokov and his wife Véra Nabokov.
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Tell them how happy they make you, like Vladimir Nabokov to Véra NabokovThe celebrated novelist was as effusive and verbose in his correspondence as in his fiction, and deeply appreciated his wife’s writing as well. In one love note he wrote, “All the happiness of the world, the riches, power, and adventures, all the promises of religions, all the enchantment of nature, and even human fame are not worth your two letters,” showing how much he cared. Unlike Joyce, he preferred not to get too sexual (at least, in the letters that survived), once writing, “My little kitten, my joy, how happily I love you today… I kiss you— but won’t say where, there are no words for that.”
“My delightful, my love, my life, I don’t understand anything: how can you not be with me? I’m so infinitely used to you that I now feel myself lost and empty: without you, my soul. You turn my life into something light, amazing, rainbowed—you put a glint of happiness on everything—always different: sometimes you can be smoky-pink, downy, sometimes dark, winged—and I don’t know when I love your eyes more—when they are open or shut…Today I can’t write about anything except my longing for you. . . I don’t know how I’ll survive the week. My tenderness, my happiness, what words can I write for you? How strange that although my life’s work is moving a pen over paper, I don’t know how to tell you how I love, how I desire you. Such agitation—and such divine peace: melting clouds immersed in sunshine—mounds of happiness.”
Not that texting “oh em squee” or a GIF of those happy little bears to your beloved pen pal isn’t great, but describing in detail how happy you are to be in a relationship or spend time with the letter recipient is much better. You want to enjoy life with them—so tell them so! It can be as simple as, “Loving you makes me so happy.”
Write down a daydream, like Emily Dickinson to Sue GilbertMany have speculated about the nature of the relationship between the intensely introverted poet Emily Dickinson and her friend Susan Gilbert, who became Dickinson’s sister-in-law in 1856. There is an almost worshipful quality to the way Emily longs for and admires Susan, as you can see from her many letters pining for her.
“I have but one thought, Susie, this afternoon of June, and that of you, and I have one prayer, only; dear Susie, that is for you. That you and I in hand as we e’en do in heart, might ramble away as children, among the woods and fields…I need you more and more, the great world grows wider, and dear ones fewer and fewer, every day that you stay away — I miss my biggest heart, my own goes wandering round, and calls for Susie.”
Everyone daydreams; why not get content out of it for a letter to a lover? You want to lie with them in the grass or float down a river or…still love them even if they were a worm! Play out a little fantasy scenario and write how much you’d like it to be true. Boom. You’re Dickinson.
An undated engraving depicting Abelard reading to Heloise.
Bettmann
Write your way through tragedy, like Abelard and HeloiseYou may not have heard of Dark Ages lovers Abelard and Heloise, a tutor and student who corresponded in Latin about romantic and intellectual topics. However, their tragic love story has formed the basis of our current cultural conception of chivalric love. They had a son out of wedlock, then married in secret, but were found out and forced to join, respectively, a convent and a monastery. Their letters reveal their heartbreak and inner turmoil as they fight through their remaining feelings.
“What have I to hope for after this loss of you? What can confine me to earth when Death shall have taken away from me all that was dear upon it? I have renounced without difficulty all the charms of life, preserving only my love, and the secret pleasure of thinking incessantly of you, and hearing that you live; and yet alas! You do not live for me, and I dare not even flatter myself with the hopes that I shall ever enjoy a sight of you more. This is the greatest of my afflictions. Merciless Fortune!”
Eh, maybe don’t copy this one… It’s just an example!
A previous version of this story, written by HowAboutWe, was published in 2013. It has since been updated.
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